A typical cloud computing platform operated by or for an enterprise deploys one or more data protection software tools or mechanisms to protect the application data, i.e., data input, output, or otherwise associated with applications programs executing on the cloud computing platform. Data protection includes, but is not limited to, data backup and data recovery functions. However, these data protection tools work in isolation from one another, and track only what is protected.
The advent of software defined data centers (SDDC) and big data functionality in a cloud computing platform increases the level of complexity in protecting the high volume of data, both “dark data” (i.e., unprocessed raw data) and “smart data” (i.e., transformed and analyzed data), in the enterprise. An SDDC is a computing system wherein elements of the infrastructure, e.g., networking, storage, compute, etc., are virtualized and delivered to tenants (customers or enterprise users) of the data center as services. An SDDC is typically implemented in a cloud computing platform environment and the virtualized and delivered components are typically controlled through an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) layer.
An SDDC deployment based on a “hybrid cloud,” wherein the data to be protected is spread beyond a single location (beyond the so-called “glass house”), multiplies the above-mentioned challenge. A hybrid cloud computing platform is a cloud computing deployment where part of the cloud computing resources (e.g., networking, storage, compute, etc.) are private cloud resources (e.g., within management and/or control of the enterprise, or within the glass house) and part of the cloud computing resources are public cloud resources (e.g., outside management and/or control of the enterprise, or outside the glass house).